Posted
by
samzenpus
on Wednesday April 24, 2013 @12:52PM
from the building-fun dept.

Ann Arbor based Brain Monkeys is an education company that teaches kids about robots and technology. With the help of her staff, founder Katie Tilton teaches a wide variety of after school classes, workshops, and summer school programs designed to let kids learn through hands-on activities. Recently, I was lucky enough to visit for one of their "Speed Sumo" nights. Kids get a NXT LEGO kit and 90 mins to build a robot that can push another robot out of a small sumo ring. Students get a basic tutorial on what makes a good sumo robot, then are free to come up with designs that they think will work best. Some of the more interesting features I saw included claws, a wedged shaped nose, and a flail-like tail (shout out to The Hammer!). Once the 90 minute build time is up the kids battle it out in the ring with the winner getting a high-five and bragging rights for building the most awesome robot of the night. Katie says: "Every day of the week I teach somewhere. I'm basically a teacher with art on a cart, but I'm robots in a car."

Katie: My name is Katie Tilton, and I'm the owner of Brain Monkeys.
We're an education company that teaches kids about robotics and technology
and anything hacking. We do Arduino classes, after school
classes, I do a summer camp, lots of different stuff.

Tonight, we're going to be doing a Sumo Battle Bot competition. I call it
speed sumo and pie, because I like pie. And, basically what it entails is
the kids come in and they get a kit, which is an NXT LEGO kit. It's a robot
kit. It is complete with various different pieces. They have 90 minutes to
build a robot.

Basically, it has three Servo motors and two wheels, and the objective is
to stay within the confines of the Sumo Battle Bot ring, which is basically
a round piece of wood painted black with a white ring around it. They have
to stay within that ring and then knock the other person out of the ring.

So they've got 90 minutes, and it's kind of challenging. You see, I kind of
came up with this idea because I got sick and tired of seeing the kids
build the same robot year after year at summer camp. It was just the basic
tribot, LEGO, drive forward kind of robot. So I figured maybe if I gave
them a kit with nothing started first, they could come up with weird
different designs. And we see lots of different things. We see things where
the wheels are out here. I've seen one where it has just had one wheel in
the front and one wheel in the back. All different kind of stuff.

We take some of the kids and we talk to them about what the basic bot is.
What makes a good base? Should your robot be high off the ground or low to
the ground? Should it be wide? Should it have lots of pieces? That kind of
stuff. What makes a good robot base?

To stay within the ring, we teach them how to use a sensor called a light
sensor, which basically just measures a variance of black and white. So it
can tell, basically, where the white edge is versus the black dot of the
sumo ring.

I give them rules, printed off. These are like the official Brain Monkey
Sumo Bot rules. Only two bots in the ring at a time. They can only push the
robot, the On button once, when we say "battle." We give them points - 10
points if they win, 5 points if they lose - and we use a little grid over
their scoreboard. Sometimes we'll have two different rounds, and we add up
all the scores and the winner is awesome. We give him a high-five.

I teach all the time. Every day of the week I teach somewhere. I'm
basically a teacher with art on a cart, but I'm robots in a car.